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Start Me Up! A profile of LoveThis

LoveThis is a new iPhone app that allows you to share recommendations with friends and store them so you don't forget them at a later date.

You can share recommendations for anything you want, such as products, movies, music or even a good plumber.

To find out more about how it works I spoke to LoveThis founder and CEO Alexis Dormandy...

In one sentence, what is LoveThis?

LoveThis is a free mobile and web service that makes sure you never forget a recommendation again; it enables you to simply note and swap the best bits of life with friends.

What problems does LoveThis solve?

Your friends are constantly telling you about great restaurants they’ve been to, or a reliable handyman who fixed their sink.

But when it comes to organising a date, or needing to fix a leak, your mind goes blank. You can’t even remember who it was, much less what they recommended.

You’ve been through all your emails, scrolled through your tweets and searched that pile of newspaper clippings you have stored in a drawer - but no joy.

If you don’t recognise this problem, then we can’t help you. If you do, then LoveThis will help you live life better.

When and why did you launch it?

I launched LoveThis launched in 2011 mainly because I had a bad memory.

I was also frustrated that there wasn’t an effective way to remember all the good things I found, nor pass them on to friends and family that might also enjoy them.

I believe people should be having more fun, more often and be spending their hard earned money in places that actually deserved it, if only they had access to recommendations from people they trust.

Who is your target audience?

This service is ideal for anyone who wants to spend their time and money more

enjoyably, or for people whose lives are already full to the brim with fun and exciting new things and wanted to help their friends out of their predictable drudgery.

What are your immediate goals?

We are focussed on the roll out of our new design and functionality of the service (smartphone app and website) in Autumn 2012.

What were the biggest challenges involved in building LoveThis?

Our biggest challenge so far is striking a balance between keeping our service

simple but also including entertaining features that people find useful and interesting.

How will the company make money?

Two ways: If your friend recommends you a book and you decide to buy it, we’ll sell it to you.

Even more importantly, if lots of people start recommending the same things, then that data is very valuable to the companies in that industry, the retailers that sell it, and even people who want to invest in it. Above all else, we’re a data business.

Where would you like to be in one, three and five years?

In one year we would like to have established a simple and easy to use service.

By year three we want to have a very large number of customers having more fun, and enjoying a better value life.

And in five years time, if we’ve done our job, there will be thousands of small businesses thriving because word of mouth about their great product or service is instantly passed between customers and their friends.

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